Marxism is the
political philosophy and
economic worldview based upon a materialist
interpretation of history, a
Marxist
analysis of
capitalism, a
theory of social change, and an
atheist view of human liberation derived
from the work of
Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels; three primary aspects of
Marxism are:
- The dialectical and materialist concept of history —
Humankind's history is fundamentally that of the struggle between
social classes. The productive capacity of society is the
foundation of society, and as this capacity increases over time the
social relations of production, class relations, evolve through
this struggle of the classes and pass through definite stages
(primitive communism, slavery, feudalism, capitalism). The legal,
political, ideological and other aspects (ex. art) of society are
derived from these production relations as is the consciousness of
the individuals of which the society is composed.
- The critique of capitalism — In capitalist
society, an economic minority (the bourgeoisie) dominate and
exploit the working class (proletariat) majority. Marx uncovered the
interworkings of capitalist exploitation, the specific way in which
unpaid labor (surplus value) is
extracted from the working class labor theory of value, extending and
critiquing the work of earlier political economists value. Although the production
process is socialized, ownership remains in the hand of the
bourgeosie. This forms the fundamental contradiction of capitalist
society. Without the elimination of the fetter of the private
ownership of the means of production, human society is unable to
achieve further development.
- Advocacy of proletarian revolution — In order
to overcome the fetters of private property the working class must
seize political power internationally through a social revolution
and expropriate the capitalist classes around the world and place
the productive capacities of society into collective ownership.
Upon this, material foundation classes would be abolished and the
material basis for all forms of inequality between humankind would
dissolve.
Contemporarily, Karl Marx’s innovative analytical methods —
materialist
dialectics, the labour theory
of value, et cetera — are applied in
archaeology,
anthropology,Bridget O'Laughlin (1975)
Marxist
Approaches in Anthropology Annual Review of Anthropology
Vol. 4: pp. 341–70 (October 1975)
(doi:10.1146/annurev.an.04.100175.002013).
William Roseberry (1997)
Marx and Anthropology Annual
Review of Anthropology, Vol. 26: pp. 25–46 (October 1997)
(doi:10.1146/annurev.anthro.26.1.25)
media
studies,
political science,
theater,
history,
sociological theory,
cultural studies,
education,
economics,
literary criticism,
aesthetics,
critical psychology, and
philosophy.
Classical Marxism
The term
Classical Marxism denotes the theory
propounded by
Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels. As such, Classical
Marxism distinguishes between “Marxism” as broadly perceived, and
“what Marx believed”; thus, in 1883, Marx wrote to the French
labour leader
Jules Guesde and to
Paul Lafargue (Marx’s son-in-law) —
both of whom claimed to represent Marxist principles — accusing
them of “revolutionary phrase-mongering” and of denying the value
of reformist struggle; from which derives the paraphrase: “If that
is Marxism, then I am not a Marxist”. To wit, the US Marx scholar
Hal Draper remarked, “there are few
thinkers in modern history whose thought has been so badly
misrepresented, by Marxists and anti-Marxists alike”.
Marx and Engels
Karl Heinrich Marx (5 May 1818—14 March 1883) was
a greatly influential German
philosopher,
political economist, and
socialist revolutionary, who analytically addressed the
matters of
alienation
and
exploitation of the worker, the
capitalist mode of
production, and
historical
materialism. He is most famous for analysing history in terms
of
class struggle, summarised in the
initial line introducing the
Communist Manifesto (1848): “The
history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class
struggles”.
His ideas were influential in his time, and
it was greatly expanded by the successful Bolshevik October
Revolution of 1917 in Imperial Russia.
Friedrich Engels (28 November 1820–5 August 1895)
was the nineteenth century German
political philosopher and Karl Marx’s
co-developer of
communist theory. Marx and
Engels met in September 1844; discovering that they shared like
views of
philosophy and
socialism, they collaborated and wrote works such
as
Die heilige Familie (
The Holy Family). After the
French deported Marx from France in January 1845, Engels and Marx
moved to Belgium, which then permitted greater
freedom of expression than other
European countries; later, in January 1846, they returned to
Brussels to establish the Communist Correspondence Committee.
In 1847, they began writing
The Communist Manifesto
(1848), based upon Engels’
The Principles of Communism;
six weeks later, they published the 12,000-word pamphlet in
February 1848. In March, Belgium expelled them, and they moved to
Cologne, where they published the
Neue Rheinische
Zeitung, a politically
radical newspaper. Again, by 1849, they
had to leave Cologne for London. The Prussian authorities pressured
the British government to expel Marx and Engels, but Prime Minister
Lord John Russell
refused.
After Karl Marx’s death in 1883, Friedrich Engels became the
editor and
translator of Marx’s writings. With the
Origins
of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1884) —
analysing
monogamous marriage as guaranteeing male social domination of
women, a concept analogous, in communist theory, to the capitalist
class’s economic domination of the working class —
intellectually significant contributions to
feminist theory and
Marxist feminism.
Early intellectual influences
Different types of thinkers influenced the development of Classical
Marxism; the primary influences derive from:
and secondary influences derive from:
Principal ideas
These are the principal concepts of Marxism:
Exploitation
A person is
exploited if he
or she performs more labour than necessary to produce the goods
society consumes; like-wise, a person is an exploiter if he or she
performs less labour than is necessary to produce goods.
Exploitation is a matter of
surplus
labour — the amount of labour one performs beyond what one
receives in goods. Exploitation has been a socio-economic feature
of every class society, and is one of the principal features
distinguishing the social classes. The power of one social class to
control the
means of production
enables its exploitation of the other classes.
In capitalism, the
labour theory
of value is the operative concern; the
value of a
commodity equals the total labour time
required to produce it. Under that condition,
surplus value (the difference between the
value produced and the value received by a labourer) is synonymous
with the term “surplus labour”; thus, capitalist exploitation is
realised as deriving surplus value from the worker.
In pre-capitalist economies, exploitation of the worker was
achieved via physical coercion. In the capitalist mode of
production, that result is more subtly achieved; because the worker
does not own the means of production, he or she must voluntarily
enter into an exploitive work relationship with a capitalist in
order to earn the necessities of life. The workers entry into such
employment is voluntary in that he or she chooses which capitalist
to work for; the worker must work or starve, thus exploitation is
inevitable, and the voluntarism of capitalist exploitation is
illusory.
Alienation
Alienation denotes the
estrangement of people from their humanity (
German:
Gattungswesen, “species-essence”, “species-being”), which
is a systematic result of capitalism. Under capitalism, the fruits
of production belong to the employers, who expropriate the surplus
created by others, and so generate alienated labourers. Alienation
objectively describes the worker’s situation in capitalism — his or
her self-awareness of this condition is unnecessary.
Historical Materialism
The
historical materialist
theory of history, also synonymous to “the economic interpretation
of history” (a coinage by
Eduard
Bernstein), looks for the causes of societal development and
change in the collective ways humans use to make the means for
living. The social features of a society (social classes, political
structures, ideologies) derive from economic activity; “base and
superstructure” is the
metaphoric common
term describing this historic condition.
Base and superstructure
The
base and superstructure
metaphor explains that the totality of social relations regarding
“the social production of their existence” i.e.
civil society forms a society’s
economic
base, from which rises a
superstructure
of political and legal institutions i.e.
political society. The base corresponds to
the social consciousness (politics, religion, philosophy, etc.),
and it conditions the superstructure and the social consciousness.
A conflict between the development of material productive forces
and the relations of production provokes social revolutions, thus,
the resultant changes to the economic base will lead to the
transformation of the superstructure. This relationship is
reflexive; the base determines the superstructure, in the first
instance, and remains the foundation of a form of social
organization which then can act again upon both parts of the base
and superstructure, whose relationship is
dialectical, not literal.
Historical periodisation
Marx considered that these socio-economic conflicts have
historically manifested themselves as distinct stages (one
transitional) of development in Western Europe.
- Primitive
Communism: as in co-operative tribal societies.
- Slave Society: a development of
tribal progression to city-state; Aristocracy is born.
- Feudalism: aristocrats are
the ruling class; merchants evolve into capitalists.
- Capitalism: capitalists are
the ruling class, who create and employ the proletariat.
- Socialism: workers gain class
consciousness, and via proletarian revolution depose the
capitalist dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, replacing it in turn
with dictatorship of the
proletariat through which the socialization of the means of
production can be realized.
- Communism: a classless and
stateless society.
Class
The identity of a
social class
derives from its relationship to the
means of production; Marx describes the
social classes in capitalist
societies:
- Proletariat: “those individuals who
sell their labour power, and who, in
the capitalist mode of production, do not own the means of
production“. The capitalist mode of production establishes the
conditions enabling the bourgeoisie to
exploit the proletariat
because the workers’ labour generates a surplus value greater than the workers’
wages.
- Bourgeoisie: those who “own the
means of production” and buy labour power from the proletariat,
thus exploiting the proletariat; they subdivide as bourgeoisie and
the petit bourgeoisie.
- Petit bourgeoisie are those
who employ labourers, but who also work, i.e. small business
owners, peasant landlords, trade workers et al. Marxism predicts
that the continual reinvention of the means of production
eventually would destroy the petit bourgeoisie, degrading them from
the middle class to the proletariat.
- Lumpenproletariat: criminals,
vagabonds, beggars, et al., who have no stake in the economy, and
so sell their labour to the highest bidder.
- Landlords: an historically important
social class who retain some wealth and power.
- Peasantry and farmers: a disorganised class incapable of effecting
socio-economic change, most of whom would enter the proletariat,
and some become landlords.
Class consciousness
Class consciousness denotes the
awareness — of itself and the social world — that a
social class possesses, and its capacity to
rationally act in their best interests; hence, class consciousness
is required
before they can effect a successful
revolution.
Ideology
Without defining
ideology,
Marx used the term to denote the production of images of social
reality; according to Engels, “ideology is a process accomplished
by the so-called thinker consciously, it is true, but with a false
consciousness. The real motive forces impelling him remain unknown
to him; otherwise it simply would not be an ideological process.
Hence he imagines false or seeming motive forces”. Because the
ruling class controls the society’s means of production, the
superstructure of society, the ruling social ideas are determined
by the best interests of said ruling class. In
The German
Ideology, “the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch
the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force
of society, is, at the same time, its ruling intellectual force”.
Therefore, the ideology of a society is of most importance, because
it confuses the alienated classes and so might create a
false consciousness, such as commodity
fetishism.
Political economy
The term
political
economy originally denoted the study of the conditions
under which economic production was organised in the capitalist
system. In Marxism, political economy studies the means of
production, specifically of capital, and how that is manifest as
economic activity.
Marxist schools of thought
Marxism-Leninism
Note: this is a discussion of Marxism-Leninism as a school of
thought. For a discussion of its political practice, see
subsection Marxism#Marxism as a
political practice below.
At least in terms of adherents and the impact on the world stage,
Marxism-Leninism, also known colloquially as
Bolshevism or simply
communism is the biggest trend within Marxism,
easily dwarfing all of the other schools of thought combined.
Marxism-Leninism is a term originally coined by the
CPSU in order to denote the ideology that
Vladimir Lenin had built upon the thought of
Karl Marx. There are two broad areas that
have set apart Marxism-Leninism as a school of thought.
First, Lenin's followers generally view his additions to the body
of Marxism as the practical corollary to Marx's original
theoretical contributions of the 19th century; insofar as they
apply under the conditions of advanced capitalism that they found
themselves working in. Lenin called this time-frame the era of
Imperialism. For example,
Joseph Stalin wrote that The most important
consequence of a Leninist-style theory of Imperialism is the
strategic need for workers in the industrialized countries to bloc
or ally with the oppressed nations contained within their
respective countries' colonies abroad in order to overthrow
capitalism. This is the source of the slogan which is Lenin's twist
on the traditional socialist slogan.
Second, the other distinguishing characteristic of Marxism-Leninism
is how it approaches the question of organization. Lenin believed
that the traditional model of the Social Democratic parties of the
time, which was a loose, multitendency organization was inadequate
for overthrowing the Tsarist regime in Russia. He proposed a
hardened cadre organization that disciplined itself under the model
of
Democratic
Centralism.
Marxism-Leninism was closely associated with the figure of Joseph
Stalin until his death.
Upon the death of Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev became the leader of the
Soviet
Union, an act which ultimately lead to the splintering of
the Marxist-Leninism into several competing schools of
thought.
Post-Stalin Moscow-aligned communism
At the
22nd
Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Khrushchev
made several ideological ruptures with his predecessor, Joseph
Stalin. First, Khrushchev denounced the so-called
Cult of Personality that had developed
around Stalin, which ironically enough Khrushchev had had a pivotal
role in fostering decades earlier. More importantly, however,
Khrushchev rejected the heretofore orthodox Marxist-Leninist tenet
that class struggle continues even under socialism. Rather, the
State ought to rule in the name of all classes. A related principle
that flowed from the former was the notion of
peaceful co-existence, or that the
newly-emergent socialist bloc could peacefully compete with the
capitalist world, solely by developing the productive forces of
society.
Eurocommunism
Beginning around the 1970s, various communist parties in Western
Europe, such as the
Partito
Comunista Italiano in Italy and the
Partido Comunista de España under
Santiago Carillo tried to hew to a
more independent line from Moscow. Particularly in Italy, they
leaned on the theories of
Antonio
Gramsci, despite the fact that Gramsci happened to consider
himself an orthodox Marxist-Leninist. This trend went by the name
Eurocommunism.
Anti-revisionism
There are many proponents of Marxist-Leninism who rejected the
theses of Khrushchev, particularly Marxists of the
Third World. They believed that Khrushchev was
unacceptably altering or "revising" the fundamental tenets of
Marxism-Leninism, a stance from which the label "anti-revisionist"
is derived. Typically, anti-revisionists refer to themselves simply
as Marxist-Leninists, although they may be referred to externally
by the following epithets.
Maoism
Maoism takes its name from Mao
Zedong, the erstwhile leader of the Peoples Republic
of China; it is the variety of anti-revisionism that took inspiration, and
in some cases received material support, from China, especially
during the Mao period. There are several key concepts that
were developed by Mao. First, Mao concurred with Stalin that not
only does class struggle continue under the
dictatorship of the
proletariat, it actually accelerates as long as gains are being
made by the proletariat at the expense of the disenfranchised
bourgeoisie. Second, Mao developed a strategy for revolution called
Prolonged People's War in
what he termed the
semi-feudal countries
of the Third World. Prolonged People's War relied heavily on the
peasantry. Third, Mao wrote many theoretical articles on
epistemology and dialectics, which he called
contradictions.
Hoxhaism
Hoxhaism, so named because the central contribution
of Albanian statesman Enver Hoxha, was
closely aligned with China for a number
of years, but grew critical of Maoism because
of the so-called Three Worlds
Theory put forth by elements within the Communist Party of China and
because it viewed the actions of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping unfavorably. Ultimately,
however, Hoxhaism as a trend came to the understanding that
Socialism had never existed in China at all.
Trotskyism
Trotskyism is the usual term for followers of the ideas of Russian
Marxist
Leon Trotsky. Trotsky was a
contemporary of Lenin from the early years of the
Russian Social Democratic
Labor Party, where he led a small trend in competition with
both Lenin's
Bolsheviks and the
Mensheviks; nevertheless Trotsky's followers
claim to be the heirs of Lenin in the same way that mainstream
Marxist-Leninists do, hence the preferred self-designation amongst
Trotskyists of
Bolshevik-Leninists. There are several
distinguishing characteristics of this school of thought; foremost
is the theory of
Permanent
Revolution. This stated that in less-developed countries the
bourgeoisie were too weak to lead their own 'bourgeois-democratic'
revolutions. Due to this weakness, it fell to the proletariat to
carry out the bourgeois revolution. However, with power in its
hands the proletariat would then continue this revolution
(permanently), thus transforming it from a bourgeois to a socialist
revolution, and from a national to an international
revolution.
Another shared characteristic between Trotskyists is a variety of
theoretical justifications for their negative appraisal of the
post-Lenin Soviet Union; that is to say, after Trotsky was expelled
by a majority vote from the CPSU and subsequently from the Soviet
Union. As a consequence, Trotsky defined the Soviet Union under
Stalin, as a planned economy ruled over by a bureaucratic caste. In
The Revolution
Betrayed, Trotsky advocated for the position of a
political overthrow against the majority around Stalin lest a
capitalist counterrevolution were to take place in the USSR.
Western Marxism
Western
Marxism is a term used to describe a wide variety of Marxist theoreticians based in Western and Central
Europe (and more recently North
America), in contrast with philosophy in the Soviet
Union, the Socialist Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia or the People's Republic of China.
Structural Marxism
Structural Marxism is an approach to Marxism based on
structuralism, primarily associated with the
work of the French theorist
Louis
Althusser and his students. It was influential in France during
the late 1960s and 1970s, and also came to influence philosophers,
political theorists and sociologists outside of France during the
1970s.
Neo-Marxism
Neo-Marxism is a school of Marxism that began in the 20th century
and hearkened back to the early writings of
Marx, before the influence of
Engels, which focused on
dialectical idealism rather than
dialectical materialism. It
thus rejected economic determinism being instead far more
libertarian. Neo-Marxism adds
Max Weber's broader understanding of
social inequality, such as
status and
power, to orthodox Marxist thought.
The Frankfurt School
The Frankfurt School is a school of
neo-Marxist social
theory,
social research, and
philosophy.
The grouping emerged
at the Institute for
Social Research (Institut für Sozialforschung) of the
University of Frankfurt am
Main in Germany. The term "Frankfurt School" is
an informal term used to designate the thinkers affiliated with the
Institute for Social Research or influenced by them: it is not the
title of any institution, and the main thinkers of the Frankfurt
School did not use the term to describe themselves.
The Frankfurt School gathered together dissident Marxists, severe
critics of capitalism who believed that some of
Marx's alleged followers had come to parrot a
narrow selection of Marx's ideas, usually in defense of orthodox
communist or
social democratic parties. Influenced
especially by the failure of working-class revolutions in Western
Europe after
World War I and by the rise
of
Nazism in an economically,
technologically, and culturally advanced nation (Germany), they
took up the task of choosing what parts of Marx's thought might
serve to clarify social conditions which Marx himself had never
seen. They drew on other schools of thought to fill in Marx's
perceived omissions.
Max Weber exerted a major influence, as
did
Sigmund Freud (as in
Herbert Marcuse's
Freudo-Marxist synthesis in the 1954 work
Eros and Civilization). Their emphasis on the "critical"
component of theory was derived significantly from their attempt to
overcome the limits of
positivism, crude
materialism, and
phenomenology by returning to
Kant's
critical philosophy and its successors
in German
idealism, principally
Hegel's philosophy, with its
emphasis on
negation and
contradiction as inherent properties of
reality.
Cultural Marxism
Cultural Marxism is a form of Marxism that adds a
critical theory based Marxist analysis of
the role of the media, art, theatre, film and other cultural
institutions in a society, often with an added emphasis on race and
gender in addition to class.
As a form of political analysis, Cultural
Marxism gained strength in the 1920s, and was the model used by the
Frankfurt School at Columbia University; and later by
another group of intellectuals at the Centre for Contemporary
Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham, England.
Autonomist Marxism
Autonomism is a term applied to a variety
of social movements around the world, which emphasizes the ability
to organize in autonomous and horizontal networks, as opposed to
hierarchical structures such as unions or parties. Autonomist
Marxists, including
Harry Cleaver,
broaden the definition of the working-class to include salaried and
unpaid labour, such as skilled professions and housework; it
focuses on the working class in advanced capitalist states as the
primary force of change in the construct of capital. Modern
autonomist theorists such as
Antonio
Negri and
Michael Hardt argue that
network power constructs are the most effective methods of
organization against the neoliberal regime of accumulation, and
predict a massive shift in the dynamics of capital into a 21st
Century
Empire.
Analytical Marxism
Analytical Marxism refers to a style of thinking about Marxism that
was prominent amongst a half-dozen
analytically trained English-speaking
philosophers and social scientists during the 1980s. It was mainly
associated with the
September Group
of academics, so called because they have biennial meetings in
varying locations every other September to discuss common
interests. The group also dubbed itself "Non-Bullshit Marxism"
(Cohen 2000a). It was characterized, in the words of
David Miller, by "clear
and rigorous thinking about questions that are usually blanketed by
ideological fog". (Miller 1994)
Marxist humanism
Marxist humanism is a branch of Marxism that primarily focuses on
Marx's earlier writings,
especially the
Economic and
Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 in which Marx develops
his
theory of
alienation, as opposed to his later works, which are considered
to be concerned more with his structural conception of
capitalist society. It was opposed by
Louis Althusser's "
antihumanism", who qualified it as a
revisionist movement.
Marxist humanists contend that ‘Marxism’ developed lopsided because
Marx’s early works were unknown until after the orthodox ideas were
in vogue the Manuscripts of 1844 were published only in 1932 and it
is necessary to understand Marx’s philosophical foundations to
understand his latter works properly.
Marxist theology
Although Marx was intensely critical of institutionalized religion
including
Christianity, some Christians
have "accepted the basic premises of Marxism and attempted to
reinterpret Christian faith from this perspective." Some of the
resulting examples are some forms of
liberation theology and
black liberation theology. Pope
Benedict XVI strongly opposed radical liberation theology while he
was still a cardinal, with the Vatican
condemning acceptance of Marxism. Black liberation
theologian
James Cone wrote in his book
For My People that "for analyzing the structure of
capitalism. Marxism as a tool of social analysis can disclose the
gap between appearance and reality, and thereby help Christians to
see how things really are."
Key Western Marxists
Georg Lukács
Georg Lukács (April 13, 1885 – June
4, 1971) was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher and literary critic in the tradition of Western Marxism. His main work
History and Class Consciousness (written between 1919 and
1922 and first published in 1923), initiated the current of thought
that came to be known as Western Marxism. The book is notable for
contributing to debates concerning Marxism and its relation to
sociology,
politics and
philosophy,
and for reconstructing
Marx's theory of alienation
before many of the works of the
Young
Marx had been published. Lukács's work elaborates and expands
upon Marxist theories such as
ideology,
false consciousness,
reification and
class consciousness.
Karl Korsch
Karl Korsch (August 15, 1886 - October 21, 1961)
was born in Tostedt, near Hamburg, to the family of a middle-ranking bank
official.
In his later work, he rejected orthodox (classical) Marxism as
historically outmoded, wanting to adapt Marxism to a new historical
situation. He wrote in his
Ten Theses (1950) that "the
first step in re-establishing a revolutionary theory and practice
consists in breaking with that Marxism which claims to monopolize
revolutionary initiative as well as theoretical and practical
direction" and that "today, all attempts to re-establish the
Marxist doctrine as a whole in its original function as a theory of
the working classes social revolution are reactionary
utopias."
Korsch was especially concerned that Marxist theory was losing its
precision and validity - in the words of the day, becoming
"vulgarized" - within the upper echelons of the various socialist
organizations. His masterwork,
Marxism and Philosophy is
an attempt to re-establish the historic character of Marxism as the
heir to
Hegel.
Antonio Gramsci
Antonio Gramsci (January 22, 1891 April 27,
1937) was an Italian writer, politician and political theorist. He was a
founding member and onetime leader of the
Communist Party of Italy. Gramsci
can be seen as one of the most important Marxist thinkers of the
twentieth century, and in particular a key thinker in the
development of
Western Marxism. He
wrote more than 30 notebooks and 3000 pages of history and analysis
during his imprisonment. These writings, known as the
Prison
Notebooks, contain Gramsci's tracing of
Italian history and
nationalism, as well as some ideas in
Marxist theory,
critical theory and educational theory
associated with his name, such as:
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse (July 19, 1898 July
29, 1979) was a prominent
German-
American philosopher and
sociologist of
Jewish
descent, and a member of the
Frankfurt
School.
Marcuse's critiques of capitalist society (especially his 1955
synthesis of
Marx and
Freud,
Eros and Civilization, and his
1964 book
One-Dimensional
Man) resonated with the concerns of the leftist student
movement in the 1960s. Because of his willingness to speak at
student protests, Marcuse soon became known as "the father of the
New Left," a term he disliked and
rejected.
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre (June 21, 1905 –
April 15, 1980) was already a key and influential philosopher and
playwright for his early writings on
individualistic existentialism. In his later career, he
attempted to reconcile the existential philosophy of
Søren Kierkegaard with
Marxist philosophy and
Hegelian dialectics in his work
Critique of Dialectical
Reason.
Sartre was also involved in Marxist politics and was impressed upon
visiting Marxist revolutionary
Che
Guevara, calling him "not only an intellectual but also the
most complete human being of our age".
Louis Althusser
Louis Althusser (October 16, 1918 –
October 22, 1990) was a
Marxist
philosopher. He was a lifelong member and sometimes strong
critic of the
French Communist
Party. His arguments and theses were set against the threats
that he saw attacking the theoretical foundations of Marxism. These
included both the influence of
empiricism
on
Marxist theory, and humanist and
reformist socialist orientations which manifested as divisions in
the European Communist Parties, as well as the problem of the 'cult
of personality' and of ideology itself. Althusser is commonly
referred to as a
Structural
Marxist, although his relationship to other schools of French
structuralism is not a simple
affiliation and he is critical of many aspects of
structuralism.
His essay
Marxism and Humanism is a strong statement of
anti-
humanism in Marxist theory,
condemning ideas like "human potential" and "species-being", which
are often put forth by Marxists, as outgrowths of a
bourgeois ideology of "humanity". His essay
Contradiction and Overdetermination borrows the concept of
overdetermination from
psychoanalysis, in order to replace the idea
of "contradiction" with a more complex model of multiple
causality in political situations (an idea closely
related to
Antonio Gramsci's concept
of
hegemony).
Althusser is also widely known as a theorist of
ideology, and his best-known essay is
Ideology
and Ideological State Apparatuses: Notes Toward an
Investigation. The essay establishes the concept of ideology,
also based on
Gramsci's theory of
hegemony. Whereas hegemony is ultimately
determined entirely by political forces, ideology draws on
Freud's and
Lacan's concepts of the unconscious and
mirror-phase respectively, and describes the structures and systems
that allow us to meaningfully have a concept of the self.
Hill, Hobsbawm, and Thompson
British Marxism deviated sharply from French (especially
Althusserian) Marxism and, like the Frankfurt School, developed an
attention to cultural experience and an emphasis on human agency
while growing increasingly distant from determinist views of
materialism. A circle of historians inside the Communist Party of
Great Britain (CPGB) formed the Communist Party Historians Group in
1946. They shared a common interest in 'history from below' and
class structure in early capitalist society. Important members of
the group included
E.P. Thompson,
Eric
Hobsbawm,
Christopher
Hill and
Raphael Samuel.
While some members of the group (most notably E.P. Thompson) left
the CPGB after the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, the common points of
British Marxist historiography continued in their works. They
placed a great emphasis on the subjective determination of history.
E. P. Thompson famously engaged Althusser in
The Poverty of
Theory, arguing that Althusser's theory overdetermined
history, and left no space for historical revolt by the
oppressed.
Post Marxism
Post-Marxism represents the theoretical work of
philosophers and
social
theorists who have built their theories upon those of Marx and
Marxists but exceeded the limits of those theories in ways that
puts them outside of Marxism. It begins with the basic tenets of
Marxism but moves away from the Mode of Production as the starting
point for analysis and includes factors other than class, such as
gender, ethnicity etc, and a reflexive relationship between the
base and superstructure.
Marxism remains a powerful theory in some unexpected and relatively
obscure places, and is not always properly labeled as "Marxism".
For example, many Mexican and some American archaeologists still
employ a Marxist model to explain the Classic Maya Collapse (c. 900
A.D.) - without mentioning Marxism by name.
Marxist Feminism
Marxist feminism is a sub-type of
feminist
theory which focuses on the dismantling of capitalism as a way to
liberate women. Marxist feminism states that private property,
which gives rise to economic inequality, dependence, political
confusion and ultimately unhealthy social relations between men and
women, is the root of women's oppression.
According to
Marxist theory, in
capitalist societies the individual is shaped by class relations;
that is, people's capacities, needs and interests are seen to be
determined by the mode of production that characterises the society
they inhabit. Marxist feminists see gender inequality as determined
ultimately by the capitalist mode of production. Gender oppression
is class oppression and women's subordination is seen as a form of
class oppression which is maintained (like
racism) because it serves the interests of capital
and the
ruling class. Marxist feminists
have extended traditional
Marxist
analysis by looking at domestic labour as well as wage work in
order to support their position.
Marxism as a political practice
Since Marx's death in 1883, various groups around the world have
appealed to Marxism as the theoretical basis for their politics and
policies, which have often proved to be dramatically different and
conflicting. One of the first major political splits occurred
between the advocates of 'reformism', who argued that the
transition to socialism could occur within existing
bourgeois parliamentarian frameworks, and
communist, who argued that the transition to a
socialist society required a revolution and the dissolution of the
capitalist state. The 'reformist' tendency, later known as
social democracy, came to be dominant in
most of the parties affiliated to the
Second International and
these parties supported their own governments in the First World
War. This issue caused the communists to break away, forming their
own parties which became members of the
Third International.
The following countries had governments at some point in the
twentieth century who at least nominally adhered to
Marxism:
Albania, Afghanistan, Angola, Benin, Bulgaria, Chile, China, Republic of
Congo, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, East
Germany, Ethiopia, Grenada, Hungary, Laos, Moldova, Mongolia, Mozambique, Nepal, Nicaragua, North
Korea, Poland, Romania, Russia, the
USSR and its republics, South Yemen, Yugoslavia, Venezuela, Vietnam. In addition, the Indian states of Kerala and
West
Bengal have had Marxist governments. Some of these
governments such as in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Chile, Moldova and parts of India have been
democratic in nature and maintained regular multiparty elections, while most
governments claiming to be Marxist in nature have established
authoritarian governments.
Marxist
political parties and movements have significantly declined since
the fall of the Soviet Union, with some exceptions, perhaps most
notably Nepal.
History
The 1917
October Revolution, led
by
Vladimir Lenin, was the first
large scale attempt to put Marxist ideas about a workers' state
into practice. The new government faced counter-revolution, civil
war and foreign intervention. Many, both inside and outside the
revolution, worried that the revolution came too early in Russia's
economic development. Consequently, the major Socialist Party in
the UK decried the revolution as anti-Marxist within twenty-four
hours, according to
Jonathan Wolff. Lenin
consistently explained "this elementary truth of Marxism, that the
victory of socialism requires the joint efforts of workers in a
number of advanced countries" (Lenin, Sochineniya (Works), 5th ed
Vol XLIV p418.) It could not be developed in Russia in isolation,
he argued, but needed to be spread internationally. The 1917
October Revolution did help inspire a revolutionary wave over the
years that followed, with the development of Communist Parties
worldwide, but without success in the vital advanced capitalist
countries of Western Europe.
Socialist revolution in Germany and other
western countries failed, leaving the Soviet Union on its own. An intense period of debate and
stopgap solutions ensued,
war
communism and the
New Economic
Policy (NEP). Lenin died and
Joseph
Stalin gradually assumed control, eliminating rivals and
consolidating power as the Soviet Union faced the events of the
1930s and its global crisis-tendencies. Amidst the geopolitical
threats which defined the period and included the probability of
invasion, he instituted a ruthless program of
industrialization which, while successful,
was executed at great cost in human suffering, including millions
of deaths, along with long-term environmental devastation.
Modern
followers of Leon Trotsky maintain that
as predicted by Lenin, Trotsky, and others already in the 1920s,
Stalin's "socialism in one country" was unable to maintain itself,
and according to some Marxist critics, the USSR ceased to
show the characteristics of a socialist state long before its
formal dissolution.
In the 1920s the
economic
calculation debate between
Austrian
Economists and Marxist economists took place. The Austrians
claimed that Marxism is flawed because prices could not be set to
recognize opportunity costs of factors of production, and so
socialism could not make rational
decisions.
Following
World War II, Marxist
ideology, often with Soviet military backing, spawned a rise in
revolutionary communist parties all over the world. Some of these
parties were eventually able to gain power, and establish their own
version of a Marxist state.
Such nations included the People's
Republic of China, Vietnam, Romania, East
Germany, Albania, Cambodia, Ethiopia, South Yemen, Yugoslavia, Cuba, and
others. In some cases, these nations did not get along. The
most notable examples were rifts that occurred between the Soviet
Union and China, as well as Soviet Union and Yugoslavia (in 1948),
whose leaders disagreed on certain elements of Marxism and how it
should be implemented into society.
Many of these self-proclaimed Marxist nations (often styled
People's Republics) eventually
became authoritarian states, with stagnating economies. This caused
some debate about whether Marxism was doomed in practise or these
nations were in fact not led by "true Marxists". Critics of Marxism
speculated that perhaps Marxist ideology itself was to blame for
the nations' various problems. Followers of the currents within
Marxism which opposed Stalin, principally cohered around
Leon Trotsky, tended to locate the failure at
the level of the failure of
world
revolution: for communism to have succeeded, they argue, it
needed to encompass all the international trading relationships
that capitalism had previously developed.
The Chinese experience seems to be unique. Rather than falling
under a single family's self-serving and dynastic interpretation of
Marxism as happened in North Korea and before 1989 in Eastern
Europe, the Chinese government - after the end of the struggles
over the Mao legacy in 1980 and the ascent of Deng Xiaoping - seems
to have solved the succession crises that have plagued
self-proclaimed Leninist governments since the death of Lenin
himself. Key to this success is another Leninism which is a NEP
(
New Economic Policy) writ very
large; Lenin's own NEP of the 1920s was the "permission" given to
markets including speculation to operate by the Party which
retained final control. The Russian experience in
Perestroika was that markets under socialism
were so opaque as to be both inefficient and corrupt but especially
after China's application to join the
WTO this
does not seem to apply universally.
The death of "Marxism" in China has been prematurely announced but
since the Hong Kong handover in 1997, the Beijing leadership has
clearly retained final say over both commercial and political
affairs. Questions remain however as to whether the Chinese Party
has opened its markets to such a degree as to be no longer
classified as a true Marxist party. A sort of tacit consent, and a
desire in China's case to escape the chaos of pre-1949 memory,
probably plays a role.
In 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed and the new Russian state ceased
to identify itself with Marxism. Other nations around the world
followed suit. Since then, radical Marxism or Communism has
generally ceased to be a prominent political force in global
politics, and has largely been replaced by more moderate versions
of democratic socialism—or, more commonly, by
neoliberal capitalism. Marxism has also had to
engage with the rise in the
Environmental movement. A merging of
Marxism,
socialism,
ecology and
environmentalism has been achieved , and is
often referred to as
Eco-socialism.
Social Democracy
Social democracy is a
political ideology that emerged in the
late 19th and early 20th century. Many parties in the second half
of the 19th century described themselves as social democratic, such
as the British
Social
Democratic Federation, and the
Russian Social Democratic
Labour Party. In most cases these were revolutionary socialist
or Marxist groups, who were not only seeking to introduce
socialism, but also democracy in un-democratic countries.
The modern social democratic current came into being through a
break within the socialist movement in the early 20th century,
between two groups holding different views on the ideas of
Karl Marx. Many related movements, including
pacifism,
anarchism, and
syndicalism, arose at the same time (often by
splitting from the main socialist movement, but also by emerging of
new theories.) and had various quite different objections to
Marxism. The social democrats, who were the majority of socialists
at this time, did not reject Marxism (and in fact claimed to uphold
it), but wanted to
reform it in certain ways and tone down
their criticism of capitalism. They argued that socialism should be
achieved through evolution rather than revolution. Such views were
strongly opposed by the revolutionary socialists, who argued that
any attempt to reform capitalism was doomed to fail, because the
reformists would be gradually corrupted and eventually turn into
capitalists themselves.
Despite their differences, the reformist and revolutionary branches
of socialism remained united until the outbreak of
World War I. The war proved to be the final
straw that pushed the tensions between them to breaking point. The
reformist socialists supported their respective national
governments in the war, a fact that was seen by the revolutionary
socialists as outright treason against the
working class (Since it betrayed the principle
that the workers "have no nation", and the fact that usually the
lowest classes are the ones sent into the war to fight, and die,
putting the cause at the side). Bitter arguments ensued within
socialist parties, as for example between
Eduard Bernstein (reformist socialist) and
Rosa Luxemburg (revolutionary
socialist) within the
Social Democratic Party of
Germany (SPD). Eventually, after the
Russian Revolution of 1917, most
of the world's socialist parties fractured. The reformist
socialists kept the name "Social democrats", while the
revolutionary socialists began calling themselves "Communists", and
soon formed the modern
Communist movement.
(See also
Comintern)
Since the 1920s, doctrinal differences have been constantly growing
between social democrats and Communists (who themselves are not
unified on the way to achieve socialism), and Social Democracy is
mostly used as a specifically Central European label for
Labour Parties since then, especially in
Germany and the Netherlands and especially since the 1959
Godesberg Program of the German SPD that
rejected the praxis of class struggle altogether.
Socialism
Although there are still many Marxist revolutionary
social movements and
political parties around the world, since
the
collapse of the Soviet
Union and its satellite states, very few countries have
governments which describe themselves as Marxist. Although
socialistic parties are in power in some Western nations, they long
ago distanced themselves from their direct link to Marx and his
ideas.
As of
2007, Laos, Vietnam, Cuba, and the
People's
Republic of China had governments in power which describe themselves
as socialist in the Marxist sense.
However, the
private sector comprised
more than 50% of the
mainland Chinese
economy by this time and the Vietnamese government had also
partially liberalised its economy. The Laotian and Cuban states
maintained strong control over the means of production.
North Korea is another contemporary socialist state , though
the official ideology of the Korean Workers' Party (originally led
by Kim Il-sung and currently chaired by
his son, Kim Jong-il), Juche, does not follow doctrinaire Marxism-Leninism as had been espoused by
the leadership of the Soviet Union.
Communism
A number
of states declared an allegiance to the principles of Marxism and
have been ruled by self-described Communist Parties, either as a
single-party state or a single
list, which includes formally several parties, as was the case in
the German
Democratic Republic. Due to the dominance of the Communist Party
in their governments, these states are often called "communist
states" by Western political scientists.
However, they have
described themselves as "socialist", reserving the term "communism"
for a future classless society, in which the state would no longer
be necessary (on this understanding of communism, "communist state"
would be an oxymoron) for instance, the
USSR was the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics. Marxists contend that, historically, there has
never been any communist country.
Communist governments have historically been characterized by state
ownership of productive resources in a
planned economy and sweeping campaigns of
economic restructuring such as
nationalization of industry and
land reform (often focusing on
collective farming or state farms.) While
they promote collective
ownership of the
means of production, Communist governments have been characterized
by a strong state apparatus in which decisions are made by the
ruling Communist Party. Dissident 'authentic' communists have
characterized the Soviet model as
state
socialism or
state
capitalism.
Marxism-Leninism
Marxism-Leninism, strictly speaking, refers to the version of
Marxism developed by
Vladimir Lenin
known as
Leninism . However, in various
contexts, different (and sometimes opposing) political groups have
used the term "Marxism-Leninism" to describe the ideologies that
they claimed to be upholding. The core ideological features of
Marxism-Leninism are those of Marxism and Leninism, that is to say,
belief in the necessity of a violent overthrow of capitalism
through
communist revolution,
to be followed by a
dictatorship of the
proletariat as the first stage of moving towards
communism, and the need for a
vanguard party to lead the
proletariat in this effort. It involves
subscribing to the teachings and legacy of Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels (Marxism), and that of Lenin, as carried forward by
Joseph Stalin. Those who view themselves as
Marxist-Leninists, however, vary with regards to the leaders and
thinkers that they choose to uphold as progressive (and to what
extent).
Maoists tend to downplay the
importance of all other thinkers in favour of
Mao Zedong, whereas
Hoxhaists repudiate Mao.
Leninism holds that capitalism can only be overthrown by
revolutionary means; that is, any attempts to
reform
capitalism from within, such as
Fabianism
and non-revolutionary forms of
democratic socialism, are doomed to
fail. The first goal of a Leninist party is to educate the
proletariat, so as to remove the various modes of
false consciousness the
bourgeois have instilled in them, instilled in
order to make them more docile and easier to exploit economically,
such as
religion and
nationalism. Once the proletariat has gained
class consciousness the party
will coordinate the proletariat's total might to overthrow the
existing government, thus the proletariat will seize all political
and economic power. Lastly the proletariat (thanks to their
education by the party) will implement a
dictatorship of the
proletariat which would bring upon them socialism, the lower
phase of communism. After this, the party would essentially
dissolve as the entire proletariat is elevated to the level of
revolutionaries.
The dictatorship of the proletariat refers to the absolute power of
the working class. It is governed by a system of proletarian
direct democracy, in which
workers hold political power through local
councils known as
soviets.
Trotskyism
Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by
Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself a
Bolshevik-
Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a
vanguard party. He considered himself
an advocate of orthodox Marxism. His politics differed sharply from
those of
Stalin or
Mao, most importantly in declaring the need for an
international "
permanent
revolution". Numerous groups around the world continue to
describe themselves as Trotskyist and see themselves as standing in
this tradition, although they have diverse interpretations of the
conclusions to be drawn from this.
Trotsky advocated
proletarian
revolution as set out in his theory of "
permanent revolution", and he argued
that in countries where the
bourgeois-
democratic
revolution had not triumphed already (in other words, in places
that had not yet implemented a capitalist democracy, such as Russia
before 1917), it was necessary that the proletariat make it
permanent by carrying out the tasks of the social revolution (the
"socialist" or "communist" revolution) at the same time, in an
uninterrupted process. Trotsky believed that a new socialist state
would not be able to hold out against the pressures of a hostile
capitalist world unless socialist revolutions quickly took hold in
other countries as well, especially in the industrial powers with a
developed proletariat.
On the
political spectrum of
Marxism, Trotskyists are considered to be on the left. They
fervently support democracy, oppose political deals with the
imperialist powers, and advocate a spreading of the revolution
until it becomes global.
Trotsky developed the theory that the Russian workers' state had
become a "
bureaucratically
degenerated workers' state". Capitalist rule had not been
restored, and nationalized industry and economic planning,
instituted under Lenin, were still in effect. However, the state
was controlled by a bureaucratic caste with interests hostile to
those of the working class. Trotsky defended the Soviet Union
against attack from imperialist powers and against internal
counter-revolution, but called
for a
political revolution
within the USSR to restore socialist democracy. He argued that if
the working class did not take power away from the Stalinist
bureaucracy, the bureaucracy would restore capitalism in order to
enrich itself. In the view of many Trotskyists, this is exactly
what has happened since the beginning of
Glasnost and
Perestroika
in the USSR.
Some argue that the adoption of market socialism by the People's
Republic of China has also led to capitalist
counter-revolution.
Maoism
Maoism or
Mao Zedong Thought ( ), is a variant of Marxism-Leninism derived from the teachings
of the Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong (Wade-Giles transliteration: "Mao
Tse-tung").
The term "Mao Zedong Thought" has always been the preferred term by
the
Communist Party of
China, and the word "Maoism" has never been used in its
English-language publications except
pejoratively. Likewise, Maoist groups outside
China have usually called themselves Marxist-Leninist rather than
Maoist, a reflection of Mao's view that he did not change, but only
developed, Marxism-Leninism. However, some Maoist groups, believing
Mao's theories to have been sufficiently substantial additions to
the basics of the
Marxist canon, call themselves
"Marxist-Leninist-Maoist" (MLM) or simply "Maoist".
In the People's Republic of China, Mao Zedong Thought is part of
the official doctrine of the Communist Party of China, but since
the 1978 beginning of
Deng Xiaoping's
market economy-oriented reforms, the
concept of "
socialism with Chinese
characteristics" has come to the forefront of Chinese politics,
Chinese economic reform has
taken hold, and the official definition and role of Mao's original
ideology in the PRC has been radically
altered and reduced (see
History of
China).
Unlike the earlier forms of Marxism-Leninism in which the urban
proletariat was seen as the main source
of revolution, and the countryside was largely ignored, Mao
believed that peasantry could be the main force behind a
revolution,
led by the proletariat and a vanguard
Communist party. The model for this was of course the Chinese
communist rural Protracted People's War of the 1920s and 1930s,
which eventually brought the Communist Party of China to power.
Furthermore, unlike other forms of Marxism-Leninism in which
large-scale industrial development was seen as a positive force,
Maoism made all-round rural development the priority. Mao felt that
this strategy made sense during the early stages of socialism in a
country in which most of the people were peasants.Unlike most other
political ideologies, including other
socialist and Marxist ones, Maoism contains an
integral
military doctrine and explicitly
connects its political ideology with
military strategy. In Maoist thought,
"political power grows from the barrel of the gun" (a famous quote
by Mao), and the
peasantry can be
mobilized to undertake a "
people's war"
of armed struggle involving
guerrilla
warfare in three stages.
Left communism
Left communism is the range of
communist
viewpoints held by the Communist Left, which criticizes the
political ideas of the
Bolsheviks from a
position that is asserted to be more authentically
Marxist and
proletarian
than the views of
Leninism held by the
Communist International
after its first two Congresses.
Although she lived before communist left became a distinct
tendency,
Rosa Luxemburg has been
heavily influential for most left communists, both politically and
theoretically. Proponents of left communism have included
Herman Gorter,
Anton Pannekoek,
Otto Rühle,
Amadeo
Bordiga,
Paul Mattick,
Onorato Damen and
Marc
Laverne.
Two major
traditions can be observed within Left communism: the Dutch-German tradition;
and the Italian tradition. The political positions those
traditions have in common are a shared opposition to what is termed
frontism,
nationalism, all kinds of
national liberation movements and
parliamentarianism and there is
an underlying commonality at a level of abstract theory. Crucially,
Left Communist groups from both traditions tend to identify
elements of commonality in each other.
The historical origins of Left Communism can be traced to the
period before the
First World War, but
it only came into focus after 1918 .
All Left Communists
were supportive of the October
Revolution in Russia, but
retained a critical view of its development. Some, however,
would in later years come to reject the idea that the revolution
had a
proletarian or
socialist nature, asserting that it had simply
carried out the tasks of the
bourgeois
revolution by creating a
state
capitalist system.
Left Communism first came into being as a clear movement in or
around 1918. Its essential features were: a stress on the need to
build a
Communist Party entirely
separate from the
reformist and
centrist elements who were seen as
having betrayed
socialism in 1914,
opposition to all but the most restricted participation in
elections, and an emphasis on the need for
revolutionaries to move on the offensive. Apart from that, there
was little in common between the various wings. Only the Italians
accepted the need for electoral work at all for a very short period
of time, and the German-Dutch, Italian and Russian wings opposed
the "right of nations to self-determination", which they denounced
as a form of
bourgeois
nationalism.
Prominent
left
communist groups existing today include the
International Communist
Current and the
International
Bureau for the Revolutionary Party. Also, different factions
from the old Bordigist
International Communist Party
are considered left communist organizations.
Disputing these claims
Some academics dispute the claim that the above political movements
are Marxist. Communist governments have historically been
characterized by state ownership of productive resources in a
planned economy and sweeping
campaigns of economic restructuring such as
nationalization of industry and
land reform (often focusing on
collective farming or state farms.) While
they promote collective
ownership of the
means of production, Communist governments have been characterized
by a strong state apparatus in which decisions are made by the
ruling Communist Party. Dissident communists have characterized the
Soviet model as
state socialism or
state capitalism. Further, critics
have often claimed that a Stalinist or Maoist system of government
creates a
new ruling class, usually called
the
nomenklatura.
Marx defined "communism" as a classless, egalitarian and stateless
society. To Marx, the notion of a communist state would have seemed
an oxymoron, as he defined communism as the phase reached when
class society and the state had already been abolished. Once the
lower stage of communism, commonly referred to as socialism, had
been established, society would develop new social relations over
the course of several generations, reaching what Marx called the
higher phase of communism when bourgeois relations had been
abandoned. Such a development has yet to occur in any historical
self-claimed socialist state.
Some argue that socialist states have contained two new distinct
classes: those who are in government and therefore have power, and
those who are not in government and do not have power. Sometimes,
this is taken to be a different form of capitalism, in which the
government, as owner of the means of production, takes on the role
formerly played by the bourgeois class; this arrangement is
referred to as "
State capitalism".
These statist regimes have generally followed a
command economy model without making a
transition to this hypothetical final stage.
Criticisms
Criticisms of Marxism are many and varied. They concern both the
theory itself, and its later interpretations and
implementations.
Right
Marx and Engels never dedicated much work to show how exactly a
communist economy would function, leaving Marxism, at least in its
classical form, a "negative ideology," concerned primarily with
criticism of the status quo. Later generations of Marxists have
attempted to fill in the gap, resulting in several different and
competing Marxist views of the way a communist society should be
organized.
Prominent economist
Milton Friedman
was of the opinion that
free markets are
the best and most efficient way of running the economy for the
benefit of all. In the
economic calculation debate
between
Austrian Economists and
Marxist economists, the Austrians claimed that Marxism is flawed
because without a market for productive factors, which Marxism
would abolish, productive factors could not be labeled with market
prices and therefore, so the Austrians say, Marxism makes rational
economic calculation impossible and would lead to social collapse.
This criticism could also be seen as part of the
Austrian School's general criticism of
command-control-type mathematical modelling and
Keynesian "fine-tuning" of the economy
generally, which Austrian economists believe is not possible due to
the inherent complexity of market participants' ever-evolving
subjective choices.
Individualists disagree with the basic
approach of Marxism, that of viewing all people as acting under the
influence of socio-economic forces, and instead focus on the
differences and unpredictable actions of individuals.
Left
Criticisms of Marxism have come from the political left as well as
the political right:
See also
- Other articles about Marxism:
- See also:
Notes
- S. L. Becker (1984) “Marxist Approaches to Media Studies: The
British Experience”, Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 1(1):
pp. 66–80.
- Marxian economics
- See Manuel Alvarado, Robin Gutch, and Tana Wollen (1987)
Learning the Media: Introduction to Media Teaching,
Palgrave Macmillan.
- See MIA introduction at “The Programme of the Parti
Ouvrier”
- Not found in search function at Draper Arkiv
- Elster, pp. 79–80.
- “Alienation” entry, A Dictionary of Sociology
- Evans, p. 53; Marx’s account of the theory is the Preface to
A
Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859).
. Another exposition of th theory is in The
German Ideology. It, too, is available online from marxists.org.
- See A
Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859),
Preface, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1977,
with some notes by R. Rojas, and Engels: Anti-Dühring
(1877), Introduction General
- Marx does not claim to have produced a master-key to history.
Historical materialism is not “an historico-philosophic theory of
the marche generale, imposed by fate upon every people,
whatever the historic circumstances in which it finds itself”, K.
Marx, Letter to editor of the Russian newspaper paper
Otetchestvennye Zapiskym, 1877) He explains that his ideas
are based upon a concrete study of the actual conditions in
Europe.
- Joseph McCarney: Ideology and False Consciousness, April 2005
- Engels: Letter to Franz Mehring, (London 14 July 1893), Donna
Torr, translator, in Marx and Engels Correspondence,
International Publishers, 1968
- Karl Marx, The German Ideology
- For example, the Communist Party of China alone has more than
66 million members. See http://www.chinatoday.com/org/cpc/
-
http://www.plp.org/books/Stalin/node14.html#SECTION00500000000000000000
- "Marxist Theology" in The
Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology, p. 352.
- [1] Marxist Roots of Black Liberation
Theology
- Karl Korsch (1950) Ten Theses on star wars
Today
- [plato.stanford.edu/entries/sartre/ Jean-Paul Sartre on
Stanford Encyclopedia.]
- Anderson, Jon. Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life. 1997
p.468
- Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses: Notes Toward an
Investigation is available in several English volumes
including Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays
- Thompson, E. P., (1978). The Poverty of Theory & other
essays Merlin, 1978. ISBN 085036-231-8.
- Free to Choose, Milton Friedman
References
- Stanford: Stanford University Press.
- Jon Elster, An Introduction to
Karl Marx. Cambridge, England, 1986.
- Michael Evans, Karl Marx. London, 1975.
- Robinson, Cedric J. : Black
Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition, 1983,
Reissue: Univ North Carolina Press, 2000
External links
General resources
Introductory articles
Marxist websites
Specific topics